A Look Inside Siena Farms

By Rachael Ray Every Day Staff
, Aug 31, 2015

For our September issue, we had three chefs across the country take us behind the scenes at their farms. For the full story, pick up an issue today!

Most of the beautiful produce chef Ana Sortun cooks at her vegetable-centric Boston-area restaurants Oleana, Sofra and Sarma comes from 75-acre Siena Farms, which is across the street from her home in Sudbury, MA. Sortun’s husband, Chris Kurth, grew up on the farm and now runs it. It’s named after the couple’s 10-year-old daughter.

FIELD NOTES

“Chris was working at a teaching farm, a place called the Farm School in Athol, MA, and he was looking for some restaurant accounts to work with—he was trying to sell us some spinach. Basically it was one of those love-at-first-sight things: I took the spinach and that was that.”

WHY IT’S WORTH IT

“Harvesting ingredients at their moment has been huge. You know when the potatoes are just dug, they are much different than when they’ve been stored for a month. There are lessons I’ve learned by being around things growing, like the parts of the vegetable that aren’t super sexy—the stalks of Brussels sprouts or the leaves of broccoli—are actually really delicious. It’s pretty spectacular.“